Global evidence of collective human efforts to live in harmony with nature

In response to the interconnected crises related to nature’s decline, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework calls for large-scale actions to ‘live in harmony with nature’ by 2050. Achieving this vision requires shifts in practices, social structures, and values across society, which demands collective actions across all major societal systems on local, regional and global scales, and engaging governments, civil society, Indigenous peoples, and the private sector. Here, we bring together data on a diverse set of initiatives towards living in harmony with nature across eight major societal systems: ‘spatial planning’, ‘health and wellbeing’, 'production and consumption’, 'economy and finance’, ‘law’, ‘governance’, 'knowledge and education’, and ‘arts and culture’. Each initiative consists of multiple traceable actions, ranging from local innovations to large-scale system-level interventions that reshape institutions, practices, or infrastructure. We quantify how widespread these initiatives are today, where they have potential for impact, and when and by whom they have been spread. Using existing databases and new data, we assess where the initiatives are today and where they see high levels of action and good quality of implementation. We also investigate the temporal dynamics of spread to identify regions of origins, the economic development contexts of major adoption and periods of rapid international spread. Finally, we identify what types of actors drive implementation of the ten initiatives, whether initiatives have diversified in types of actors over time, and the most prevalent coalitions. Our analysis builds the empirical case to retain hope for a future where biodiversity is conserved and restored, the needs of all people are met while the stability of Earth’s systems are maintained, when initiatives included here and beyond are continue to be amplified, whether to be replicated in other geographical contexts, to be institutionalised for stronger impacts, and to be culturally strengthened for paradigm shifts. This analysis serves as both a repository and collective memory of human capacities to inspire further actions, and as evidence of pluralistic, collective human effort across the world to live in harmony with nature.